Carbon Pricing at the Point of Sale

Every financial transaction has a climate consequence

By displaying the true cost of production or “price of carbon”, at the point of sale, consumers can clearly understand the environmental impact of the products and services they are buying and take action.

Ecosphere+ has developed innovative solutions for consumers and retailers to facilitate this in various shop types and locations, on- and off-line.

Carbon pricing for retail

Putting a price on carbon puts a value on carbon emissions and use of carbon, and through this incentivises carbon reductions. Paying for the carbon we use and emit is like paying for repairs: it helps us address the damage caused by fossil fuels and unsustainable land use by making them more expensive – and therefore less attractive. Thus, the use of high carbon products and services decreases, while cleaner and more sustainable options become more viable.

By using nature-based carbon credits (the equivalent of one tonne of CO2 reduced or removed from the atmosphere), companies are able to protect critical rainforests and their communities, directly linking customers’ purchases to the ecosystems most vital to global climate health.

Consumers are demanding more products and services with proven positive environmental and social impacts, which we help businesses to provide. We offer a number of solutions to ensure products and services are Climate+. For example, we recently partnered with sustainable shoe brand, Nisolo to help them inset carbon credits into their supply chain, creating shoes that protect forests with every step.

Micro-transactions

An influential and scalable way of connecting consumers with the climate impact of the products they buy is through pricing the carbon emissions of a product at the point of sale, using grams of carbon credits to rebalance its impact.

Consumers are able to understand the environmental impact of the products they are buying – both positive and negative – when they buy them, and can mitigate this in an instant, with millions of micro-transactions scaling up to make a huge collective impact. At the same time, retailers and consumers will be financially incentivised to reduce and eventually remove carbon from their products and their lifestyles.

Case study: Poseidon Foundation

Ecosphere+ partnered with Poseidon to develop a unique blockchain-based platform that transacts grams (rather than tonnes) of our forest-based carbon credits through micro-transactions, allowing an effective integration with the retail sector. This technology platform was used in the Ben & Jerry’s London scoop shop pilot as a way to embed the payments for the carbon credits into the point of sale system.

This solution is being developed to work for both in-store and online payments, so that brands and/or customers can make any purchase positive for the climate by funding forest protection. There will also be a Poseidon app, where customers can track the carbon impact of their purchases and the aggregated positive on-the-ground impact for forests, wildlife and communities.